Child or infant car seats are especially designed to carry an infant or toddler in a vehicle. Child car seats serve two primary purposes. First, the child car seat retrains and prevents injury to the child in the event of an accident. Secondly, the child car seat holds the child in a comfortable manner so that the child does not move about the car while it is being driven.
Car seats are secured to an automobile seat by either a lap or lap/shoulder seat belt. Typically, infants that weigh up to 22 pounds are placed in a rear-facing position. A rear-facing position is employed for infants so as to better support their head and neck during transport and in a crash. Proper recline is important for very young infants who lack the muscular strength to hold their head up or to address the potential of positional asphyxia. Alternatively, a car seat base may be secured to the vehicle seat by the seat belt. The infant car seat is then latched to the base. This eliminates having to always thread a belt through the car seat when traveling from one place to another.
Unfortunately, known car seats, by themselves, are unable to accommodate varying inclines of the supporting automobile seat on which it is placed. The car seats which do provide an adjustment feature only provide two or three coarse adjustment levels. As such, it may not provide the necessary fine adjustment to allow for support of the child's head and neck.
Thus, the need exists for an infant car seat base which accommodates the various inclines of supporting automobile seats.